Address

A Bitcoin address is similar to a physical address or an email. It is the only information you need to provide for someone to pay you with Bitcoin. An important difference, however, is that each address should only be used for a single transaction.

A bitcoin address is similar to a physical address or an email address. An address is a string of letters and numbers. It is the only information needed to send or receive Bitcoin. Each address should only be used in a single transaction. Addresses as safe to share so long as the owner's private key is kept secure. A Bitcoin address is an identifier of 27-34 alphanumeric characters beginning with the number 1 or 3, that represents a destination for a bitcoin payment. Addresses can be generated at no cost by any user of Bitcoin. At any active Bitcoin site, click "New Address" to be assigned a random address. It is also possible to obtain a Bitcoin address using an account at an exchange or online wallet service.

An example of a Bitcoin address: 31uEbMgunupShBVTewXjtqbBv5MndwfXhb. Bitcoin addresses are really public keys . When bitcoins are sent to an address, everyone on the network can see the transfer. However, the holder of the address private key (which is stored in their Wallet ) can actually access the BTC. A Bitcoin address is a Base58Check representation of a Hash160 of a public key with a version byte 0x00 which maps to a prefix “1”. Typically represented as text (ex 1CBtcGivXmHQ8ZqdPgeMfcpQNJr qTrSAcG) or as a QR code . A more recent variant of an address is a P2SH address: a hash of a spending script with a version byte 0x05 which maps to a prefix “3” (ex 3NukJ6fYZJ5Kk8PjycAnruZkE5Q7UW7i8). Another variant of an address is not a hash, but a raw private key representation (ex 5KQntKuhYWSRXNqp2yhdXzejkYAR7US3MT1715Mbv5CyUKV6hVe). This variant is rarely used, limited only to import/export of private keys or printing them on paper wallets .

An Ethereum address represents an account. For EOA, the address is derived as the last 20 bytes of the public key controlling the account, e.g., cd2a3d9f938e13cd947ec05abc7fe734df8dd826. This is a hexadecimal format (base 16 notation), which is often indicated explicitly by appending 0x to the address. Web3.js and console functions accept addresses with or without this prefix but for transparency we encourage their use. Since each byte of the address is represented by 2 hex characters, a prefixed address is 42 characters long. Several apps and APIs are also meant to implement the new checksum-enabled address schemeintroduced in the Mist Ethereum wallet as of version 0.5.0.